


No blaze. No glory.

by 3White_Mage3



Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Sappy, but well intentioned.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 14:53:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2114115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3White_Mage3/pseuds/3White_Mage3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake can't close his eyes, all these years later, without thinking about those ashes. He knows he never will. Forget the ashes, that is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No blaze. No glory.

This isn't the way Jake had imagined it. But then again, every single iteration of every single reality he had ever imagined or dreamed of had turned to shit, hadn't it. Shit because there wasn't gonna be a small house in bumfuck New Hampshire with fucking curtains in the goddamned window looking out from the kitchen over Cougar's stables. Shit in the form of a helicopter falling in a ball of fire from the sky. Shit because from that point forward there was no bargaining with fate, no more deals with any devils. Nowhere left to hide. Shit in the form of two platinum rings still waiting in a safe deposit box in the basement of some Boston bank until the cosmic ass pump they called a life saw fit to afford them the opportunity to put them on each other's fingers. 

Final shit in the form of a volcano of fire bursting upwards through a drainpipe and leaving nothing but ashes behind.

And oh god in heaven, those ashes.

Every. Fucking. Day. Those. Ashes. 

Jake can't close his eyes, all these years later, without thinking about those ashes. He knows he never will. Forget the ashes, that is.

Of course he's smart enough to know the ashes have always been figurative; they were never real. Nukes -- even small ones -- aren't partial to leaving anything behind except craters and radiation, as it turns out. But that's his mind creating something to hold onto when otherwise there's nothing tangible left. 

Part of the years-long agony had been exactly this, that there wasn't anything left to bury. Nothing left to hold on to, to clutch, to keen over like one of those poor Palestinian mothers on the network news every night. No one place to go to mourn, even if it was just a fucking hole in the ground with a varnished wooden box six feet down. Nothing but memories, and a few last words meant to soothe. 

Instead he's got one sentence uttered by someone who should've had bigger things to worry about at the time, such as the ticking bomb at his side, underneath him. Who cares where it was. It was too close, by miles. Someone who still loved Jake enough to spend his last seconds on earth -- not praying, not bargaining, not begging, of course not, not Carlos -- but saying the words, "I'll love you forever, Jake".

So when it was all over and all the excuses made Jake had taken those words, knowing it was the best deal he was going to get from the ungrateful nation he and Cougar had given everything for -- no triangle-folded flag, no honors, no gun salute, none of that bullshit -- just the memory of five words. He'd taken those words and he had left and he had gone home to his sister's house. 

And now here he is, all those lonely years later with tubes running into his arms and another one running out from between his legs. No glory. Not even much dignity. All that radiation having caught up over time. Not to be out-raced. 

Instead of roosters announcing the morning -- or whatever the fuck it was that he had thought was going to be his and Cougar's future -- he's got beeps and the sound of his college-aged niece crying by his bedside while his sister sits in the corner looking exhausted and just too worn out. Too many years from Uncle Jake lurking around in the purpose-built apartment above the garage, coming out only in the evening hours. Too many years of over-hearing and pretending not to listen to the neighbors' bitchy comments about the weird-acting, increasingly older, more frail guy who lived there. Too many years of knowing that after New Jerusalem her brother's life had become one steadily slowing tick tock of time toward this point. 

But now that that point is here Jake can't complain too much since the constant drip into the needle in the veins in the top-side of his right hand means that all the pain, even the biggest pain of all, the soul-deep one which has haunted him all these years, is lessened. Jake can't say he's going to protest. A big part of him is signaling that it's time he surrenders the fight, gives in to the inevitable, and just goes. It's probably his last chance at any kind of dignity, truth be told.

Funny thing is, and the tech geek in him has to insist upon a what-the-fuck-moment at the same time the failed church-going-adolescent in him says "aha", that the further he slides from what he's known as reality these last many years -- a reality currently manifesting itself as pain, beeps, techno pings, and mindless human chatter somewhere outside his hospital room door -- the more he's convinced that he sees a certain someone waiting. RIGHT. THERE. All he's gotta do is reach out his hand and take the hand of the gorgeous man in the ridiculous cowboy hat who is saying, "I said I would love you forever".


End file.
